Will Power wins Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach

Will Power started Sunday's Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach from the No. 12 position, courtesy of a 10-spot grid deduction sustained this week by all cars with Chevrolet engines.

Unfazed, Power picked off drivers ahead of him one by one. His ability to make passes on a street course not easy to pass on enabled him to run the 85 laps on two pit stops instead of three and made Power the winner of the IndyCar main event by just 0.86 seconds over Simon Pagenaud.

Pagenaud, a rookie, was in a Honda engine-powered car. But the penalty notwithstanding, his was the only car with a Honda engine to finish in the top seven even though no Chevrolet-powered car started higher than 11th.

James Hinchcliffe was going to finish off the podium but was upgraded to third when Ryan Hunter-Reay, who crossed the finish line in that position, was docked 30 seconds for avoidable contact with Takuma Sato on the last lap. Hunter-Reay ended up sixth and Sato was eighth because the contact with Hunter-Reay caused him to spin out.

Dario Franchitti, who started on the pole because of the Chevy penalties, did not have a good day and finished 15th.

Power also won at Long Beach in 2008 in the Champ Car finale before that series merged with IndyCar. Under the circumstances, this win was inordinately nicer.

"You know, this was a very sweet victory because I've been on pole here I think '09, '10 and '11, and it just frustrated me that every year something would happen and I couldn't win," Power said. "I thought, `Oh, once again this weekend I'm starting 12th.'

"I felt as though that's impossible to win. I've got another bad year at Long Beach."

Power, a soft-spoken guy from Toowoomba, Queensland, Australia, spoke in tones that for him were very animated.

"Yeah, I could not believe it," he said. "It was just a good race, pushed hard all the time, no mistakes, great strategy, just a great team effort again."

The talented driver from Team Penske then said something kind of strange. Keep in mind he now has 17 victories - 15 in IndyCar, two in Champ Car. He also has finished second in series points each of the last two seasons.

"I go into every season thinking that there's no way I can win another race," he said. "I don't know why I feel like that but I do, and that's always my ... I guess I have an insecurity or something or I don't believe in myself enough.

"Yeah, that's always my feeling."

He believed in himself enough to pull off the most unlikely of victories. Not only did he have to pass a lot of cars, he had to do it while saving enough fuel to make it to the finish without running out.

"Yeah, I passed when I could," he said. "Every time I could get a run, I passed."

Power talked about conversations he had with his crew. He said he was being told to pass but then somehow save fuel to make up for what he used to do so.

"It was just a day of pushing as hard as I could while saving fuel," he said. "It was a good race as far as passing and strategy and everything. Two weeks in a row."

Power, now the series points leader, won two weeks ago at Barber Motorsports Park in Alabama. IndyCar then had a week off before coming to Long Beach.

Power led just 15 laps - as in the last 15.

Pagenaud might be a rookie, but he didn't drive like one. The Frenchman from Sam Schmidt Motorsports led the most laps, 26, but had to pit three times. Even so, he reduced a 4.51-second deficit with five laps to go to less than one second by race's end.

Pagenaud now has finishes of sixth, fifth and second in the season's first three events.

At the end, Power had to lap EJ Viso, who then was between Power and Pagenaud. Race control had asked the cars about to be lapped to move over for the leaders. Viso finally did, but Pagenaud wouldn't say he could have won if Viso would have moved sooner.

"I don't know," he said. "With a lot of ifs, you could change the world. It is what it is at the end of the day. I'm really happy with second. But if I had an opportunity (to pass Power), I definitely would have tried.

"You can trust me on that."

Pagenaud was queried about the engine situation. Specifically, he was asked if it was demoralizing that even with its 11 cars sustaining 10-spot penalties Chevrolet-powered cars still had six in the top seven.

"No, it's not," he said. "I think Honda is doing a great job. I think it's very tight with Chevy. But you know, Chevy has got teams like Penske and Andretti with six cars, so it's quite a bit of cars to beat and they're very strong as a team."

Reaping the benefits of Hunter-Reay's move on Sato was Hinchcliffe, who made the podium even though he actually crossed the finish line fourth. Prior to Sunday he had three fourth-place finishes, all last year in his first IndyCar season.

"Any competitor wants to earn it," said Hinchcliffe, of Andretti Autosport. "I would have rather have done that pass on the track to get the first podium, to get any podium, to get anything.

"You don't like being given stuff like that. But at the end of the day it's a function of racing, and it is what it is.

"Sometimes those things work for you and sometimes they work against you, so it all sort of balances out and you just have to take these little things when they come."